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Language PlanningA summaryBy Elizabeth Demissie, Beniyam Jembere and Chimdi Wakuma
2009
Submitted to: Dr. Zelealem LeyewAddis Ababa University
11/26/2009
Summary on Language Planning
By
Elizabeth Demissie
Beniyam Jembere
Chimdi Wakuma
To
Zelealem Leyew (Phd)
Addis Ababa University
Institute of Language Studies
Department of African Languages and Applied Linguistics
Language Planning and Standardization Course (ALAL 601)
Addis Ababa
November 2009
Contents
1. What is Language Planning?
2. Concepts of Language Planning
2.1. Instrumental approach
2.2. Socio- linguistic approach
3. Ideologies of Language Planning
3.1 Linguistic Pluralism
3.2 Linguistic Assimilation and Nationalism
3.3 Internationalism
3.4 Verncularization
4. The Aims of Language Planning
4.1 Extra-Linguistic Aims
4.2 Semi-Linguistic Aims
4.3 Linguistic Aims
5. Language Related Problems which trigger Language Planning
6. Factors Affecting Language Planning
7. Who Is Involved In Language Planning Efforts And How?
8. Language Planning Types
8.1. Status planning
8.2. Corpus planning
8.2 . Acquisition planning
9. Criteria of Language Choice in Language Planning
10. Stages in Language Planning
References
1. What is Language Planning?
According to Fishman (1972), Language Planning is a systematic activity of
regulating and improving existing languages or creating new common regional,
national or international languages. Similarly Fasold (1987:246) explains the
idea of Language Planning as language determination, to refer to choices of
languages to be used for specific purposes. In any country, for instance, there is
a tendency of selecting a given language to be functioning in such areas as
education, media, courts and others.
Many other scholars define Language Planning in their own ways. The
prominent scholars in Language Planning, Rubin and Jernudd (1971: xvi), on the
other hand, define it as follows.
Language planning is a deliberate language change; that is; changes in
the system of language code or speaking or both that are planned by
organizations that are established for such purpose or given a mandate
to fulfill such purpose. As such, language planning is focused on
problem solving and is characterized by the formulation and evaluation
of alternatives for solving language problems to find the best (or
optimal, most efficient) decision.
Moreover, Kaplan and Baldauf (1997:3), who also consider Language planning
as an attempt to change the way in which it is used, remarks that Language
Planning is also a means of preventing change to take place. Their definition is
stated as indicated hereafter.
Language planning is a body of idea, laws, and regulations (language
policy), change rules, believes, practices intended to achieve a planned
change (to stop change from happening) in the language use in one or
more communities.
Generally, it is possible to say that Language Planning is an area which deals
with language related problems and its solutions. It is a calculated effort to
influence the function, structure, or acquisition of a language or language
variety within a speech community.
It is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of
non-governmental organizations, such as grass-roots organizations and even
individuals. The goals of Language Planning differ depending on the nation or
organization, but generally include making planning decisions and possibly
changes for the benefit of communication. Planning or improving effective
communication can also lead to other social changes such as language shift or
assimilation, thereby providing another motivation to plan the structure,
function and acquisition of languages.
2. Concepts of Language Planning
According to Fasold (1987:250) there are two concepts of language planning -
the instrumental approach and the social-linguistic approach. Let us
discuss these approaches one after the other.
2.1. The instrumental approach sees language fundamentality as a tool.
This approach is just like a work. For example, a work for mechanics is so simple
provided that mechanical tools are standardized. Likewise, communication
would be easier if languages are standardized. According to the advocators of
this approach, as Fasold (ibid) states, some languages are better than others in
their balance of beauty, clarity, elasticity and economy and these should be
chosen over less adequate languages where possible. When impossible,
Language Planning should be used to improve the quality of the inadequate
language.
2.2. The socio- linguistic approach begins with the recognition of a social
problem that is connected with language. In this approach there is no need of
attempt to improve the esthetic and functional quality of languages as
instrumental tools. Rather, there is seeing language as a resource that can be
used in improving social life. This way of practicing Language Planning would
attempt to determine which of the available linguistic alternative is most likely
to improve a problematic situation.
3. Ideologies of Language Planning
As Daoust (1997:441) explain by referring Cobarrubias (1983) there are
language ideologies which motivate the undertaking of language reforms.
These are:
3.1 Linguistic Pluralism
Linguistic pluralism promotes the coexistence of different language groups and
their right to maintain and cultivate their languages on an equitable basis. For
example, French is officially recognized in the south, Flemish in the North,
German in the East.
3.2 Linguistic Assimilation and Nationalism
Nationalism often favors linguistic assimilation to make sure that every member
of a speech community is able to use the dominant language. This is a cause for
a dominant language to gain prestige and become superior over the minor
languages. In extreme case, linguistic minorities are given little or no rights.
This kind of ideology has occurred in France in which the government planned
to eliminate the non standard French varieties; which has resulted in modern
Language Policy by France revolution. In Russia and Indonesia the same
situation has happened.
3.3 Internationalism
Internationalism is the ideology which consists in adopting a non indigenous
language of wider communication either as an official language or as language
of instruction which underlies the language planning policies of several
postcolonial countries. For example, in Gabon, French is the sole official
language, in Cameroon, both French and English are official languages, in Haiti
both the Creole and French are official languages.
3.4 Verncularization
Vernacularization is the situation in which indigenous or national languages are
restored or modernized and officially recognized instead of or alongside an
international language of wider communication. For example, In Madagascar,
both French and Malagasy enjoy official status. In Israel, Hebrew was revived
and installed as a national language.
4. The Aims of Language Planning
Like any other activities, Language Planning has its own aims. Scholars in this
area have come up with various types of classification of the goals. Rabin
(1971, 277-279)), for instance, classifies the aims of Language Planning as:
Extra-Linguistic aims, Semi-Linguistic aims and Linguistic aims. It is important to
discuss each of them as follows.
4.1 Extra-Linguistic Aims these are treated as typical instances of Language
Planning and appear to concern sociolinguists and political scientists. It’s said
that their implementation often involves teaching a language to a large number
of people. These aims are classified as:
Horizontal- this is concerned with change in area of use. The area of
use can be geographical (country, province, etc.) and communal (with
mixed population).
Vertical- such an aim is about change in social use like 1. Between
classes, 2. Between town and country, settled and nomads, etc. and 3.
In specific uses like literary vs spoken, or religious vs vernacular use.
Diachronic- this type of aim is said to be radical. It is involved in the
revival of ‘dead’ language, the use of written language for speaking or
of a spoken language for writing, the creation of a new language block
and surprisingly the killing, or allowing to die, an existing language.
4.2 Semi-Linguistic Aims- these aims represent the most frequent type of
planned language change. Even though it seems difficult to which discipline this
study could belong, strong sociological and psychological factors seem to be
contained in them. Added to this fact, there is no doubt that the linguists do the
research in most cases. The Semi-linguistic aims are categorized as:
Writing- this is aimed at first, changing the writing system (e.g. from
logographic to alphabetic script, from diacritic to linear representation
of vowels), second changing features of the writing system (e.g.
introduction of capitals; new single graphs instead of digraphs; abolition
of special initials or final graphs; abolition of word-divider), and third,
Para-orthographical change (e.g. pronunciation, standards of
transliteration).
Spelling- this is concerned with systemization and unification,
simplification, phonemization (especially of etymological spelling), word
boundary spelling changes (e.g. dividing prepositions, articles, and the
like from nouns).
Pronunciation- is about the unification of the regional or social
allophones and the like that are not affecting the distribution or number
of phonemes.
Restrictions in speaking- it is the use of politeness forms and the
avoidance language taboos.
4.3 Linguistic Aims- this the province of the normative linguist, in
collaboration with the literary practitioner. The aims are classified as:
Vocabulary- aims at: 1. the enlargement of vocabulary, 2. Vocabulary
standardization ( as technical, non-technical and dialectal), 3.
Sociosemantics (decisions on sources of vocabulary enlargement), the
sources could be foreign, native, older forms of the same language,
regional dialect (borrowing), closely related languages (adaptation),
vulgar and slang forms (admissibility).
Structure- such a change is related to the phonology, morphology and
syntax.
Style- this is concerned with such styles as Traditional vs Europeanized
style(specified according to domain of language use), “high” style vs
simple straight forward writing and original national prestige literatures’
ways of reading like in modernized spelling or translation.
5. Language Related Problems which trigger Language
Planning
Language planning deals with language related problems and its solutions. To
find out the solutions, the problems should be identified first. Okoth Okombo by
quoting Webb and Kembo-Sure (2000) identifies four language based problems.
These language related problems are:
Restricted access to knowledge and skills
Low productivity and ineffective performance in the workplace
Inadequate political participation by the public, manipulation,
discrimination, and exploitation by the ruling powers, national division
and conflict
Linguistic and cultural alienation
Basically, language related problems are not exactly language problems; rather
they are problems in different domains. The problems appear out of using the
language in different domains like education, economy, politics or social life.
The whole idea of Language Planning, as a policy matter belongs not only to the
restricted domains of language, but also to wider field of public policy. It is also
part of the wider social engineering and used to achieve other goals like
political participation or national integration. For example Tanzania used
language planning to reduce multilingualism at national level.
Language Planning is a solution to language related problems. To handle the
problems appropriately, governments’ Language Policy and Planning
Intervention should be done carefully by considering their context.
6. Factors Affecting Language Planning
Language planning is a future oriented activity. It plans for the future, so it
might fail somewhere. To minimize this risk of failure, it should consider the fact
of language within its context, in addition to language use and linguistic rules.
According to Rubin and Jernudd (1971) the following are the contextual factors
to be considered.
Economic variables and interests- should be considered because
language is a resource
Political variables- are the other factors that should be seen carefully
because language can be used as an expression of vested interests
through problems of language
Demographic variables- the number the speaker of the language, their
living places and the like should be considered
Psychological variables- include the attitude of the society towards the
language because it can affect the process of planning
Social variables and interests- the sociolinguistic variables are included
here to be consider in the planning
7. Who Is Involved In Language Planning Efforts And How?
A question of ‘who is the actor in Language Planning activity?’ may arise. To
answer this, it of great importance to have a look at the view of such scholars
as Kaplan and Baldauf (1997); they explain that language planning activity
involves many actors because it has inter-disciplinary nature. The following are
among the major ones:
Because Language Planning typically responds to problems that are
sociopolitical in nature, sociologists or political scientists may first identify
and assess the need for some sort of action.
Linguists can properly participate in the needs assessment stage to determine
if the languages or dialects chosen adequately address the problem. And may
suggest ways in which syntax or morphology may be standardized, or may
assist in expanding technical vocabularies.
Educators incorporate Language Planning legislation into action and develop
programs to fulfill the needs identified.
Writers keep up the tradition of writing in a dying language or complete
written works in a previously unwritten language. This stylistic expansion makes
possible the formulation of governmental documents in the planned language.
National language academies may oversee one or more phases of the
language planning process.
According to Fasold (1987:25) governments are in a position to make the
widest ranging, but not the most successful, decisions that influence language.
By the leadership of government there were individuals and organization who
took charge in their language planning processes.
He also added lists of language planning agents by citing Jernudd (1973) in
addition to government
1. National, but non governmental agencies
2. non national and non governmental agencies a new paper’s proof reading
function
3. the individual author, letter writer etc
8. Language Planning Types
There are two major types of planning according to Wolff (2000:332), status
planning and corpus planning.
8.1. Status planning is sometimes also referred to as ‘social’ or external’
planning, it is geared at establishing and developing the functional usage of a
particular language or languages within a state. In addition, according to
Mutasa (2006,119) it is a role given to language which involves the
maintenance, extension or restriction of the range of uses of a language for
particular function, or even the introduction of an official language. Status
planning is usually carried out by non-language experts usually politicians and
the considerations in the decisions are often quite political rather than social
linguistic.
Christine Macnab (1988:140) states that status planning has great relationship
with level of importance that is given to languages with respect to other
languages or the language needs of a national government. This type of
planning refers the change of language in the functions only.
In status planning comparing different varieties has its own advantage. It
involves the choice of languages to be used as official language(s) and of
educational and other cultural purposes (media, religion…). The status of these
languages may be found codified in the constitution of the country.
For any language variety, to be considered in Language Planning for the
acquisition of particular functional roles or status in the society, it must fulfill
certain requirements in terms of standardization including modernization and
cultivation. There must be codification in terms of a standard orthography, a
reliable reference grammar, a comprehensive monolingual dictionary, sufficient
and adequate reading materials and teacher-training manuals. In particular, its
vocabulary should undergo continuous expansion in some controlled way with
regard to new terminology for use of the language in education and regional or
nationwide communication. All these requirements of actual language materials
are the corpus of the language that need to be planned and implemented.
8.2 Corpus planning is the other type of language planning which is
sometimes also referred to as ‘linguistic’ or ‘internal’ planning and is geared at
establishing and developing vocabulary, morphology and spelling, or adoption
of new scrip Wolff (2000:333). It shows the planning of changes in the structure
of the language or language variety.
There are three traditionally recognized types of corpus planning: graphization,
standardization, and modernization.
Graphization
Graphization refers to development, selection and modification of scripts and
orthographic conventions for a language. In establishing a writing system for a
language, corpus planners have the option of using an existing system or
inventing a new one.
Standardization
Standardization is the process by which one variety of a language takes
precedence over other social and regional dialects of a language. This variety
comes to be understood as supra-dialectal and the ‘best’ form of a language.
The standard that is chosen as the norm is generally spoken by the most
powerful social group within the society, and is imposed upon the less powerful
groups as the form to emulate.
Modernization
Modernization is a form of Language Planning that occurs when a language
needs to expand its resources to meet functions. Modernization often occurs
when a language undergoes a shift in status, such as when a country gains
independence from a colonial power or when there is a change in the language
education policy. The most significant force in modernization is the expansion of
the lexicon, which allows the language to discuss topics in modern semantic
domains. Language planners generally focus on creating new lists and
glossaries to describe new technical terms, but it is also necessary to ensure
that the new terms are consistently used by the appropriate sectors within
society.
However, Language Planning policy can never be corpus oriented or status
oriented exclusively, because corpus and status planning cannot be separated.
8.3 Acquisition planning according to Hornberger (in Ricento, 2006:28) the
other type of Language Planning is acquisition planning. It is introduced 20
years later by Cooper in 1989. The main focus of acquisition planning is to
influence the allocation of users or the distribution of languages by means of
creating or improving opportunity or incentive to learn them, or both.
9. Criteria of Language Choice in Language Planning
In language planning activity choice made from different languages and/or
variants. Haugen (in Fasold, 1987: 256) proposed three criteria for language
choice decisions. These are:
a. Efficiency to refer the language’s easiness to use and learn
b. Adequacy to refer the degree of the language’s precision of linguistic
forms to convey information
c. Acceptability connected with the local status of the language. This
sociological component of evaluation deals with the acceptance of the
language by the members of the society
10. Stages in Language Planning
The question ‘how is language planning done?’ is connected with the planning
and implementation stages of a large planning process. Different scholars give
different stages of planning. Rubin puts it (in Fasold, 1987:252) in four steps.
1. Fact finding- a substantial amount of background information should be
available before any planning decisions are made.
2. Planning- here the actual decisions are made. The planner will establish
goals, select the means (strategies), and predict the outcomes.
3. Implementation the planning decisions are carried out
4. Feedback -at this step, the planner finds out how well the plan has
worked.
Scholars who deal with Language Planning have their own particular
approaches of listing the stages to be followed in Language Planning. Since it
consumes time to discuss all in detail and this might not be relevant, they are
briefly indicated.
Based on the authors discussed in Chumbow (1987:17) the different stages of
planning are the following.
Haugen’s (1969) puts four stapes in the planning model. These are:
1. Selection of norms
2. Codification of norms
3. Elaboration of function
4. Propagation
Fishman et al (1971) makes the stapes three.
1. Policy formation
2. Codification and elaboration
3. Implementation
Similarly Jerudd (1973) places the process in three steps model.
1. Determination of policy
2. Development of norms
3. Implementation
After discussing all these, Chumboow (ibid) himself puts the process into two
major stages. These are
1. Policy formulation
2. Policy implementation
In the policy formulation stage he includes fact finding, policy decision, outline
of implementation, and cost benefit analysis. And in the implementation –
codification, elaboration, reforms, dissemination and evaluation are included.
References
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West African Languages XVII; 1: Nigeria University Of Ilorin.
Cobarrubius, J. and Fishman J. (eds.)(1983) Progress in Language Planning: International Perspective. The Hague: Mouton.
Daoust D. (1997) Language Planning and Language Reform: in Coulmas F.
(1997). The Hand Book of Sociolinguistics. Blackwell publishers.
Dittmar, N. (1976). Sociolingustics; A Critical Survey of Theory and Application.
USA;Wheeling Illinois.
Fasold, R. (1987). The Sociolinguistics of Society. Oxford; Blackwell Publishers
Ltd.
Fishman J.A (1972) Advances in the Sociology of Language (Volume II)
Mouton, The Hague, Paris.
Kaplan R. and Baldauf R.(1997). Language Planning From Practice to Theory.
Great Britain: Multilingual Matters.
Okombo D. Language Policy: The Forgotten Parameter in African Development
and Governance Strategies.
Mutasa, D.E. (ed) (2006) African languages in the 21st century. simba Guru
publishers.
Magwa, W(2006) Towards an African Renaissance in language planning. In
Mutasa Davie E. (ed) (2006) African languages in the 21st century.
Simba Guru publishers.
Nurse, D. and Bernd H. (2000). African Languages, An Introduction. Cambridge
university press.
Rabim, C. (1971). A tentative Classification of Language-planning Aims: In
Rubin, J. and Jernudd, H. Can Language Be Planned? University Press
of Hawaii.
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and Practice for developing Nation. USA, The University Press of
Hawaii.
Strauss, Anselem H. (1972) Language and identity, in Language in Education A
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Wolff H. (2000). Language and Society: In Nurse, D. and Bernd H. African
Languages, An Introduction. Cambridge university press.
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